TURNING THE TABLES
Karen from Fair City is no more — and now Kate Gilmore has joined the Assassins
E VERYWHERE she goes actress Kate Gilmore has been asked the burning question: “Who killed you?” The 25-year-old Dubliner’s character Karen on RTÉ soap Fair City was recently stabbed to death and last night it was finally revealed KerriAnn was her cold-hearted killer. We meet in the Gate Theatre ahead of her performance as Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme in the multiple Tony Award winning Sondheim musical Assassins, about nine people who killed, or attempted to kill, American presidents. A darkly humorous look at the unravelling of these disenfranchised, disillusioned oddballs — among them John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald — the musical is a highly entertaining talent-fest directed by Selina Cartmell, who became the Gate’s artistic director last year.
Squeaky Fromme, a member of Charles Manson’s infamous ‘family’ pointed a gun at Gerald Ford in 1975, was imprisoned and eventually released in 2009.
But it has been the Carrigstown assassin that people kept enquiring about recently.
‘I’d be stopped regularly on Moore Street by people asking who killed me,’ Kate says
She describes Karen as ‘like a hurricane’ and lists her dramatic storylines in just nine months: ‘She thought Robbie was her dad, Robbie wasn’t her dad. She ended up finding out she was the product of rape.
‘Then Dan her biological father was killed in a kidnapping incident with Dr Oakley and she hadn’t had the chance to process that he was her father or to get to know him — so that really knocked her,’ explains Kate.
‘Then her boyfriend turned out to be gay. Then she hurt her foot which meant that she couldn’t dance any more and that was her dream.
‘Then she was fed up with it and she ended up going off the rails and became enemies of everyone without meaning to. She wasn’t malicious but she was someone in need of help and looking for attention so she lashed out at everyone that she knew. And they turned against her. By the end there were so many enemies you didn’t know who could have killed her.’
Kate’s last week on the soap coincided with her first week on Assassins, for which she did a lot of research to get Squeaky’s accent and character right.
Although she didn’t participate in any of the California murders for which Manson and several of his followers were initially given the death penalty, Squeaky has remained devoted to ‘Charlie’ who died in prison last November.
‘I read her book… It was really interesting to look at her back story and how she got involved with someone like that,’ says Kate. ‘How thoroughly she followed through on her love for him until he died and probably even now.
‘She’s still alive and living on the east coast. She escaped prison when she heard he had cancer. And she was found trying to walk from a southern state up to California. It was madness. She’s a really fascinating human being and it’s amazing to play someone like that.’
In Assassins Kate wears Squeaky’s hooded red coat with a gun strapped to her leg beneath — and sings several numbers throughout.
Some readers may remember Kate from The Voice Of Ireland back in 2012 when Bressie turned his red chair around for her rendition of Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody in the blind auditions. She was eliminated in the Battles stage.
‘I was 18 and a friend put me in for it. It was good craic. I didn’t realise, I suppose, that when things are shown on TV they are there forever,’ she says. ‘It is funny looking back, I do have good memories of it.
‘But obviously at the time I wasn’t looking at it in terms of career at all. It was just something I liked doing. The whole process of it was really fun, being on TV for the first time was like, “Oh wow, cool!”’ she says, in a wide-eyed teenage way.
‘My Mam and Dad met Bressie and all the celebrities. I was like, “Aw, cool”. I look back on it fondly.’
Kate reveals that her Dad, a materials manager for Dublin City Council, actually cried when Bressie turned his chair around for his daughter. Her legal secretary Mum was a bundle of nerves.
Kate is an only child and her devoted parents enrolled her in drama classes as a way of helping her to make friends. Though both her parents enjoy sing-songs and storytelling, Kate ‘never went’ to the theatre as a child.
‘My Mam and Dad just weren’t into it. It would never have come into their heads, you know,’ she says.
‘I come from a working class family and they’re into culture but they wouldn’t have been aware of going to see kids’ plays or anything. My first experience of acting came through movies and TV.’
Kate joined the Youth Theatre Company at the Gaiety School of acting in her teens before becoming a full-time student after school.
‘When I got there I realised that my passion was in theatre and that’s still where my passion is now, making shows, plays, musicals, live drama. I don’t know why. Unfortunately it’s something that you can’t not do,’ she muses.
‘Because if you could not do it you’d be far, far better off doing a different job. Because in other walks of life hard work equals success — doing this doesn’t equate to success all the time and that can be very disheartening. And competition is created where competition isn’t needed between young girls because there’s so many young girls and so few parts,’ she complains. ‘Everyone is always, “Who did you see at that audition?” It can make you very insecure. And all of these things aren’t good for your mental health.
So I really think that if you act in the theatre — and in TV and film, I suppose, but I haven’t done a lot of that myself —it’s because you can’t not do it.’
KATE is enjoying back-toback roles in the Gate. Last year she played Kitty Collins in the 16week sell-out run of The Great Gatsby and immediately after Assassins she plays Sharon Curley’s best friend Jackie in The Snapper.
‘I’m very lucky, it’s very unusual for an actor,’ she says modestly. ‘I just got the present recently of the original book by Roddy Doyle, I’ve seen the movie umpteen times and I’ve the script now for the play which he wrote as well. It’s very close to the book actually and different from the film in some ways. I’m really looking forward to it.
‘Obviously it’s an interesting time to put it on because of the nature of how Sharon becomes pregnant.’
Sharon is so intoxicated when she has sex with her neighbour Georgie Burgess on the bonnet of a car she says afterwards, ‘Who was that?’
Given the recent #MeToo movement and Harvey Weinstein scandals the scene may be seen in a different light today than it was on the film’s release in 1993. Does it still reflect
modern Ireland or has the story dated?
‘Rereading it now I think it is reflective of modern society particularly in the way people are just ignorant to the options that are there and the options that are not there,’ she says, of crisis pregnancy.
‘They don’t really realise that they’re trapped until they land themselves in a situation like that and realise, “Oh, no one is on my side, I’m really alone”.’
As well, in the book in one of her internal monologues she says, “I’m not sure what to call it”. That’s still the way it is,’ says Kate, of hazy sex after a lot of alcohol.
‘People still aren’t sure. Or maybe they are sure but they can’t do anything about it because the system is against them. So, yeah, it’s reflective.’
She also thinks the upcoming referendum to repeal the 8th amendment of our Constitution gives the play further relevance — although the result will be well known by the time The Snapper opens after Assassins finishes in June.
‘But it’s a real family dealing with this. They’re not PC, they’re not very intellectual and they’re not articulating it in the best way but they’re honest in how they’re approaching it,’ she says.
In the meantime, Kate is focused on Assassins and says it is ‘a privilege to sing Sondheim and to work with someone like Selina and in this building at the minute when it’s going through such a change and rebirth. So I feel very lucky to be involved’.
February’s Gate Theatre report upheld ‘credible and consistent’ allegations of bullying, abuse of power and inappropriate behaviour by previous artistic director Michael Colgan towards employees. Did Kate know him?
‘Yeah, I had auditioned here,’ she reveals. ‘I graduated in 2013 and auditioned here a handful of times. So I met Michael here and I knew the establishment that he had created and I never got a job but I was always auditioned and I was always treated fairly.
‘But I think…’ — she pauses for several seconds — ‘...what am I trying to say? I think what came out was a long time coming. I think a lot of people were treated unfairly — me not being one of them but a lot of people were.
‘Mainly women, actresses, people who were trying to work and so I think it was a long time coming and that the support for those women is incredibly important. And for them to be able to speak out now is incredibly important.’ A year after she graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting, Kate won an Irish Times Theatre Award for a play called Breathless.
‘I had no speech or anything prepared, I think I was 21, I thought, “No way”,’ she recalls.
‘Then I had to get up and everyone said it was funny and it was alright but looking back I wish I’d prepared something. It was a mad night. I’m so proud to have that.’
TV-WISE, it wasn’t just in Fair City where Kate’s initially small role was fleshed out considerably. She also pitched up in RTÉ drama series Striking Out, starring Amy Huberman as solicitor Tara Rafferty and Neil Morrissey as her close friend and barrister Vincent Pike.
Kate played Lucy, the new love interest of Tara’s cheating exfiance Eric Dunbar, played by Rory Keenan.
‘That was good craic,’ she says. ‘I was in the first season and I had a couple of days on it, a few lines in all of the four episodes. It was a very small part. And in the second season they decided to expand on that part, expand on the relationship between her and Eric. I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing!” I felt very lucky.’
Working on a TV show is ‘just so different’ to theatre.
‘I was learning something new every day. Working with Rory Keenan, he’s amazing. Amy is as well. They’re both just so chilled out and down-to-earth.
‘Nothing is precious and everyone is working together. It’s very egalitarian. That’s the way that set worked anyway so I felt very comfortable and at ease there.’
Kate craves normality outside of the job and counters the pressure to get roles by spending time with friends and family.
‘I’ll say Sondheim, they’ll say, “I don’t know who that is”. That grounds me and makes me feel, “Yeah, it’s just a job”,’ she says.
‘They put things into perspective for me. For me obviously my job is so important but I can’t let it take over my whole life.
#I will work very hard at it and I care about it very much,’ she emphasises. ‘We’re all just trying our best.’
Assassins runs until June 9 at the Gate Theatre. For tickets and more details see gatetheatre.ie